A BLACK FLAG WAR

We live in a society that's hesitant to be critical of any other culture, no matter its darkened depravity. We're in the miasma of moral relativism, an atmosphere in which all cultures are equal, none superior, none inferior to the other. No judgments, please.

ROUSSEAU STARTED THIS MESS

In this climate, the American Indian is viewed by the term Rousseau invented, "the noble savage," which re-enforces the idea that the Indian was the oppressed victim without fault. But we need a more balanced picture, not one in which history is air brushed.

ENTER THE INDIAN

When the settlers moved west into Texas territory, they encountered the Karankawa tribe and they were something to behold. To look at them was to see men who were strikingly tall, between six and almost seven feet. But there was more to their appearance than qualifying for any NBA basketball team.

The Karankawa were heavily tattooed, heavily pierced, and painted. The nomadic tribe, held the islands for the most part in south Texas. The territory they held was from the west end of Galveston Island down the coast to the mouth of the Rio Grande and inland about 25-65 miles depending on the region.

But hold on. You may be thinking that you can't judge a noble book by its ignoble cover, but in their case you could: they were degenerate cannibals. They weren't the innocent and the noble, savage or otherwise. The Spaniards and the Americans who met and had to deal with them said that they were superb hunters, fisherman, warriors, and longbow archery experts. In short, they were a powerful enemy to anyone wishing to take their prime hunting hunting grounds which they had taken from some other tribe.

DEGENERATE TO THE CORE

But hold on again: In 1768, a Spanish padre gave details to their flesh eating ceremonies. The "savages" [he hadn't heard that you shouldn't call another culture "savage"] would lash a captive to a stake and then, dancing around the sacrifice, they would dart in, slice off a piece of flesh with a sharp blade, then roast it in front of the victim, in an already prepared campfire. Then they would devour it, as the victim watched in horror at the consumption of himself, before his very eyes.

NO WAY

Now, enter the 19th century settlers. There was no way, absolutely no way, the Karankawa and the Americans or the Spanish or the French could coexist in peaceful and harmonious relations. Neither group could reason with the other. Neither group could educate the other. From the settlers' point of view, it was, it had to be, "Kill the Karankawa." If they didn't they, their wives, and their children would be eaten in some ritual from hell.

WE'VE HEARD THIS BEFORE

Wait a minute. This sounds similar to what Israel faced as they entered the Promised Land. Instead of the Karankawa, they faced the Canaanites whom they described as "giants." They faced the depravity of the Canaanites whose religious practices were just as depraved as the Karankawa, since the Canaanites burned their own children alive as sacrifices.

According to God's command to Israel, there was to be no co-existence; there couldn't be. Detente wouldn't work. Reason wouldn't cut it with the Canaanites.The degenerate mothers would raise degenerate children to be warriors to exterminate the Jews, so it was to be a black flag war. That's a war in which the you attack the enemy ferociously and never let up, always trying to flank the enemy, never letting him sleep, never letting him rest. Israel was to raise the black flag and hold it high. Now, we know why.

We can understand the rationale behind God's command because our ancestors faced similar circumstances.

COMANCHES

The Comanches were the fiercest and most feared of the Indian tribes. Even the Apaches asked for protection from them. No one, no tribe, no band of settlers could stop them. (So much for the crazy concept of "The Noble Savage" invented by Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century in order to glorify the "natural" life.)

But the Comanches were admired for one thing--their horsemanship. The Spanish who came to America introduced horses into North America and the Comanches developed equestrian skills without peer.

They trained their children to be horsemen at an early age. They learned to ride and ride fast and well, even being able to pick up objects from the ground as they rode by. This ability made them even more fearsome as they rode, plundered, and massacred their way over the American Plains in search of buffalo.

There's a credible source about what the Comanches trained their horses to do and it had to do with the animals' ears. Somehow, in some way, by some method, they trained horses to be able to twitch their ears alternately, back and forth. But they didn't teach them to do this for a dog and pony show; they taught them to do it to save their lives, Comanche lives. Here's how it worked:

When they would kill a buffalo, the Comanches would begin the work of butchering it right there on the field. They used every part of the buffalo, even its bones. It was at that time, that they were most vulnerable to a wild animal or an enemy who came upon them. So, what they'd trained the horses to do was to begin to twitch their ears when any perceived enemy was coming their way. One historian has written that this twitch saved many a Comanche life. We might say that the Comanches didn't invent the watchdog, but the watchhorse.

In the same way, God has given elders to the local churches, not only to teach and to be examples to the flock, but to be watchhorses to warn the believers when an enemy, a false teacher or a false doctrine comes near.

The false teacher may come as an author whose latest book disseminates a false gospel which tells people that to be saved they must "turn from their sin(s)," and the watchhorses of the local churches  label that idea, "Mission Impossible;" no one can turn from their sins. The watchhorses are like Paul in the sense that the called out the false teachers, even to the point of naming names.

The elders' ears begin to twitch when they sense a false teacher has arisen within the group or is a visiting speaker whose ideas, upon entering their ears, cause their ears to begin to twitch because the doctrine rings false, not squaring with the Word. Titus 1 describes the function of the watchhorses:

[They are to be] holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he [an elder] will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith . . .

Every local church needs watchhorses, for as the New Testament says, "They watch over your souls." Be grateful for them.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO

There's this Texas history textbook for 7th-grade students which includes the following 16 words as a unit title: "The siege of the Alamo and all of the heroic defenders who gave their lives there."

The unit title is a reference to Travis, Bowie, and Crockett who are included in the approximately 200 heroes who knew they were going to die and did die to free Texas from the despotic rule of Mexico's Santa Anna. It was their defense of the mission Alamo which gave Sam Houston the time he needed to raise the troops and win the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. Because of what the defenders of the Alamo did, Santa Anna's victory that March day in 1836 was a pyrrhic one.

HISTORY DOWN ORWELL'S MEMORY HOLE

But that title has upset working groups of educators and historians, tasked with streamlining social studies standards. They were so upset that they've advised the Texas Board of Education to remove  “heroic” from the title to describe the acts at the Alamo, because the word is “value-loaded,” according to a draft of their recommendations.

Walter L. Buenger, a professor of history at the University of Texas called the popular depiction of the Alamo “exceptionally simplistic," saying, "In some minds, [the defenders] were not heroic but vainglorious, foolish, and counterproductive."

All one has to do is to read Walter Lord's book, A Time to Stand and the reader will learn that "heroic" isn't a strong enough word to describe what those men did in their sacrifice. 

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

What's happening is that when a culture rejects the Bible and its Author, it pays the high price of losing moral categories. It becomes a society in which there's no objective, absolute right or wrong. It becomes a society in which a committee of bureaucrats must censor "heroic," because writing that such men were "heroic" is a value judgment and just who are you to make such a judgment, anyway? How dare you!

In 1970, Ray Stephens sang a song, which, although he probably didn't realize it, propagated the idea that moral categories are gone. The song was "Everything is Beautiful." But if everything is beautiful, then nothing--sin, human trafficking, genocide, Satan--is ugly, and the moral categories, including "heroic," are gone. 

Under divine inspiration, Solomon saw this clearly when he wrote in Proverbs, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction." "The fear of the Lord" a positive response to God and His Word. Once that positive response is gone, moral understanding is gone.

And to say that their actions were "vainglorious," is that not a "value-charged" word as well? Once the moral categories are down the memory hole, how do you get off this merry-go-round?

Moral understanding has therefore vanished to the extent that we lose the category of "hero." That means that there are no heroes. In swamp of moral relativism, who's to say who is and who isn't? To say the 200 men at the Alamo were heroes is to make a value judgment and such an assessment is o-u-t, out, in a culture without the Bible.

Sad, isn't it. We're getting the culture we want. So said Paul in Romans 1:24: "Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts . . ."

HOW DARK WAS IT?

The Dark Ages is a term applied to the years 476 AD to 1300 (ca.) because during that era, there was, as one history wrote, a lack of any intellectual progress and a surplus of brutality. The Dark Ages were a time when Europe fell into a swamp dominated by the iron fist of the Roman Catholic Church.

LOCK IT UP!

The Dark Ages were a time when the the Roman Catholic Church locked the Bible away from the common man and even if he somehow could come across a Bible, he couldn't read it because it was in Latin. He was dependent on what his priest told him the Bible both said and meant.

Roman Catholic theology of the Dark Ages manipulated the people through fear and hope, a control that made the Dark Ages exceptionally dark as the following narrative will attest.  Countries and cultures go dark where there is no Bible.

 If we begin with what the people were taught about the Trinity, we find that they were told that God the Father was all about thunder and judgment. But His Son was One who could intercede on one's behalf and make His Father not quite so stern and unbending.

But the Son might be found to be implacable at times, so He would need to be softened up by Mary, His mother. And if the supplicant played his cards right, Mary might cheat God the Father and the Devil on behalf of the one who prayed to her. But if Mary was remote at the time, there was Anna, her mother, and a person could go to her for help. Wait. What?

THE BIBLE NOWHERE SAYS

Is any of that in the Bible? Oh, we forget; as far as the people were concerned, there was no Bible where the common man might go and search and find the truth. It had been locked away. If he could have gone to the Book, he would have found that he was being fed lie after lie after lie by the very ones he trusted. That's why hierarchy of the swamp fought hammer and tong to keep the Bible locked up.

But if the could only have a Bible he could read, he would find the truth that God the Father and God the Son have the same essence of love, holiness, and justice (et al.); the truth that Mary is not an intercessor; the truth that Mary was not a perpetual virgin (from Jerome, 383 AD); the truth that Mary was not bodily taken to heaven (Defined as dogma by the Pope; Nov. 1950); the truth that Anna had not and has no part in such a  lineup. They would come to understand that Mary was not and is not the Queen of heaven, has no exalted place in Heaven, and does not enjoy the closest access to Jesus and God the Father. Such concepts are nowhere taught in Scripture.

THE DAWN

The Roman Catholic system's hold on the people of Europe and England began to shatter when Tyndale, Wycliffe, and Luther took up their quills and began to translate the Bible for the common Englishman and German.

As those three men began to move quills across paper, the Light was coming into the Dark Ages!